Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Every once in a while, I post a recipe that I’ve received exactly zero requests for, and this gorgeous Mongolian pork chop is the most recent example – sort of ironic, considering this is video 700, and I’m celebrating the milestone by going rogue!

While 95% of the videos you see are inspired by actual “food wishes,” sometimes I’ll remember something so delicious, I just have to add it to the library.

One of my favorite restaurants anywhere is Mustards Grill, located in California's beautiful Napa Valley. Mustards is owned and operated by chef Cindy Pawlcyn, and for decades has been serving the best kind of new American comfort fare. While I love all the food, the standout dish is their famous Mongolian pork chop.

This is my slightly simplified version, but still very close to what you’d experience at Mustards. She adds a little green onion to the marinade, and I would’ve also, had I not forgotten it at the market. She also puts a touch of cilantro in the mix, but I prefer to use it freshly chopped to garnish the cold mustard sauce (something I should have mentioned in the video, but did add to the ingredient list).

Once marinated, these pork chops can be cooked any way you like, but for the true experience, you’re going to want to cook these on a charcoal grill. For me, it’s the smokiness that brings all these flavors together, but pay special attention to my warnings about direct high-heat.

Once the chops are marked with magazine-quality lines directly over the white-hot coals, I open the grate and push the charcoal away from the center of the grill, so that the meat and flammable marinade isn’t directly over the intense heat. This ensures all that delicious smokiness, with none of that annoying, “Hey, Honey, I think the pork chops are on fire.”

Anyway, if you ever find yourself in Napa Valley, I highly recommend you stop in to Mustards and enjoy this great American treasure. But, if that’s not possible, or you simply can’t wait, then give this a try soon. Enjoy!

Ingredients for 2 Portions:

For the pork and marinade:

two 10-ounce bone-in, extra-thick, center-cut pork chops

1/2 cup hoisin sauce

1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger

4 cloves minced garlic

1 1/2 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon sherry vinegar

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

2 teaspoons sesame oil

2 teaspoons sugar

1 1/2 teaspoons hot sauce

1/2 teaspoon white pepper

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 green onion, light parts, minced

For the mustard sauce (this is enough for 4, but I didn't want to use 1/2 a yolk!):

1/4 cup red wine vinegar

2 or 3 tablespoons hot mustard powder, such as Colman's or Chinese style (add to taste!)

3 tbsp sugar (their sauce is on the sweet side, so feel free to add this to taste)

Chef John - A sincere heartfelt congratulations on your 700th video! Also it is wonderful that after 699 other videos you are still fresh enough to "go rogue" and gift us with yet another fabulous looking dish. Whoot!

Congratulations on the 700th video, Chef John. I started watching you back in 2006, and that's how I started cooking for myself. I really appreciate the time and effort you've put into this blog so that we all get to enjoy it. Thank you!

A question about the recipe: Do you think the marinade/glaze would also work with flanken-style beef short ribs? Considering that they are much thinner than these pork chops, how long would you let them stay in the marinade?

Mmmm, I just saw this on your site, and this is my Food Wish:"Foccacia di Recco," featuring Galbani’s Bel Paese. It’s sort of like a stuffed pizza, which uses a very basic, unleavened bread dough that’s rolled, spun, and stretched very thin, before being stuffed with the creamy cheese. It’s baked in a very hot oven, where it puffs up, and gets crispy on the outside, while the inside stays soft and cheesy. It was awesome, and something I must figure out how to make!Yikes, that would be excellent with the Mongolian chops.

I've never been to Mongolia, but i have lived in Sichuan, China, and my family are Taiwanese; I can say that this recipe for marinade is pretty much the same as a recipe my mother taught me and she use to be a chef for chinese cuisine. :)

Hi Chef John. I'm new at all of this and accidentally (and gratefully) stumbled upon this website and found myself watching your videos for three hours last night (till 2 am). I'm hooked!! you've given me hope that I can cook and enjoy it, and be healthy. Happy 700. I have so many to watch. Woo hoo!

Hey everyone! (And Chef John!) I just made this tonight and I wanted to let you know that replacing the creme fraiche with a good dollop of cream cheese and a splash of milk made for a very tasty sauce with an excellent consistency using my immersion blender.

I also, unfortunately, had to exchange the pork chops for tenderloin - and although it *worked,* technically, - the reality is that the meat flavor wasn't strong enough for the marinade and it ended up falling a little flat. A flavorful cut like chop would be PERFECT!

Congrats on video recipe number 700 - I once asked you how many recipes you knew to make and that was years ago! Still the excellent quality today as was in the first postings. In this video I laughed so much at "You're the boss of your own dry, overcooked meat" that I had to backtrack only to laugh at it again! Thank you Chef John for helping us eat well!

Hey Chef John Great video as usual ! But this isn't a Mongolian recipe, I'm from there and these ingredients are more chinese. In mongolia it's a lot more mouton and we usually don't put any sugar we're salty people :p It's not a critic or anything just wanted to tell you :)

Good Lord! YUM YUM YUM! My husband and I both love to cook and we really enjoyed this recipe. We followed it exactly. The mustard sauce really does compliment the pork so well. This is definitely a keeper. We marinated the chops over night. We cooked them on our cast iron grill to get the grill marks and then put them in the oven on 300 degrees F until it read 140 degrees basting every few minutes. We also made the braised cabbage from this site. It took about 50 minutes to cook it. I don't know how it could be tender after 5 minutes as stated on the recipe. I chopped it just a hair wider than what Chef John showed on the video. I think my cabbage had too many thick leaves. Next time I'll just remove all the really thick pieces. Made loaded mashed potatoes and served it with Weyerbacher's Merry Monks ale, a great ale for this meal. Thank you for another fabulous recipe Chef John you ROCK!

Hi Chef John! This was truly delicious- even though I only used one kind of vinegar in the marinade and skipped the mustard sauce and cooked it on a cast iron griddle pan- it was still one of the best dinners ever!! So much so that I was thinking of ways to get the same flavours with a different preparation. So I made pork meatballs ( put some of the minced ginger and garlic in the meatballs with salt and the two peppers) , made a cooked sauce out of the rest of the marinade and cooked the meatballs in the sauce with some carrots. I served it over the bok choy rice ( yes thanks again :-) ) . It was a really nice meal but I did think it suffered from a lack of imagination on my part. It just wasn't as stunning as the whole juicy chop with the sticky marinade thing. Would love your feedback on how to tweak this if I repeat it. Oh , and I know this has been said over and over again but thank you for this blog! It is now a daily staple for my husband and I .... We have to watch a few videos or our day isn't complete!

Chef John, I definitely want to try these chops soon. My personal plan of attack is to marinate the chops in vacuum seal bags, cook them in my Sous Vide Supreme water oven to 145 degrees, and finish them in my cast iron grill pan on the stovetop to add the grill marks.(my gas grill is down for repair). Could I add a drop or two of liquid smoke to the reserved marinade to add a little smoke flavor to the chops? Your thoughts about this approach would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.